


UU: Reflect

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 01:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Calliope, and you are ugly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	UU: Reflect

Your name is Calliope, and you are ugly.   
  
It is not a topic up for discussion. You know that you are ugly. Cherubim are not pretty, or handsome, or lovely, or any of the hundreds of words available to describe aesthetically-pleasing lifeforms or objects. It is, essentially, a fact, one that few would dare to argue with.    
  
You are especially ugly in comparison to the trolls you so love and the humans you watch and guide from your computer terminal. Again, this is a fact. The trolls, with their grey skin, black hair, horns, and yellow eyes, are magnificent, as varied in their horn shapes as in their blood colours. And the humans, with their wide palette of hair and skin and eye colours, are downright gorgeous, an infinite rainbow of diversity within a single species. As much as you love to watch trolls and humans, studying their habits and histories like an avid researcher, it makes you sick because it only takes the slightest change in lighting, in your position, to see a reflection of your ghastly face in the screen, a stark reminder of how horrific you truly are.   
  
You can never be truly like them, no matter how many layers of Ben Nye grey paint you put on your skin, or how well-crafted your white wig and spiraling candy corn horns are. When all is said and done, you are still Calliope, a cherub with lime green blood and an almost unhealthy fascination with trolls, humans, and romance that can never be yours.   
  
You take a moment to inspect yourself in the mirror that your “brother” has been so kind as to remove the sheet from. You scroll through a mental checklist of your flaws, your deformities that aren’t really deformities but the usual features of your kind. Dark green skin, stretched tight over your skull and your protruding cheekbones, with no hair to distract any onlookers. Lime green spirals decorate your bony cheeks, the colour a bright contrast against the darkness of your skin, and the irises of your too-large, lash-fringed eyes are the same bright green. Your hands are bony claws with sharp fingers, and the fangs that jut out from your usually-smiling mouth are sharper still, as are the rows of teeth hidden in your mouth. You don’t have a proper nose like the humans or trolls; instead, you have a hole, a gaping cavity in your skull where your genetic makeup has failed to give the prominent cartilage-built snout that you envy. The rest of your (hideous, grotesque) body is hidden by your suit, a fetching thing in the same shade of green as your skin, with red sixes (or nines, it doesn’t matter) for cufflinks and a bright red bowtie, and you are grateful for the way it shrouds your body. Without it, you are far less appealing, though you aren’t sure if it’s possible to be any less attractive than you already are.   
  
You’re tempted to break the mirror, shatter the glass that breaks through your attempts at hiding from yourself, but you resist the temptation and turn your attention back to the monitor where you’d just been cheering Roxy. You envy her. You wish you had her skin, her hair, her eyes and cheeks and nose. You would die a thousand deaths if it meant that you could feel the romantic feelings that she could, that trolls could, the feelings that are as bright a red as your bowtie. Goodness knows you’ve drawn them a thousand times, written about them still more, but, looking back at them, they feel so fake, so horribly fantastic and wishful that you want to delete them all from your computer and pretend that you’d never had such thoughts.   
  
But Roxy had loved the picture you’d sent her of her with cotton candy hair and an enormous swirled bright green-and-red lollipop in hand, and her reaction had been so honest, so genuinely thrilled, that for a moment, you’d dare to hope. She’d said that she’d loved it, that she’d loved  you , and your heart had almost fluttered in your chest despite knowing full well that you could never  truly return those feelings, that you were unworthy of her flushed affections. But she’d backpedaled, clarified that they were feelings of a conciliatory manner, and you’d almost sighed in relief.   
  
Well, not really  relief . More like understanding, because it was reinforcing what you knew to be fact, that no one could ever love a disgusting monster such as yourself. But when you’d said that, she’d seemed genuinely upset, had practically begged to see what you really looked like, even sworn that she wouldn’t think ill of your appearance and that she wouldn’t even judge you. And you’d hoped to believe her, even though you were so certain that she would never see you, especially not like this, with your freaky skull and bulging eyes. You’d signed off to give her time to work (mostly) uninterrupted on entering the game she was about to play with her three friends and to give yourself time to prepare for the game you’d be playing with your “brother” before you took what you hoped (prayed) would be a quick nap.   
  
But right now, seeing your reflection in the monitor, you bring one claw-like hand to trace one of your cheek spirals.    
  
If you close your eyes and imagine hard enough, you can pretend that the fingers are Roxy’s, that your skin is ash grey and you aren’t a hideous monstrosity..   
  
Your name is Calliope, and only in your dreams are you truly beautiful.


End file.
